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Committee Member Biographical Sketches
Warren M. Washington (NAE, Chair) is a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He has published more than 150 papers in professional journals and co-authored a book entitled, An Introduction to Three-Dimensional Climate Modeling. He has served on the National Science Board (chair, 2002-2006), the NOAA Science Advisory Board, President’s National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere, several panels of the National Research Council, the Secretary of Energy’s Advisory Board, among others. Washington areas of research are in the development and use of climate models for climate change studies. He has also served as President of American Meteorological Society and a member of the AAAS Board of Directors. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received many awards, including the Le Verrier Medal of the Societe Meteorologique de France, the National Weather Service Modernization Award, and the AMS Dr. Charles Anderson Award. He has honorary degrees from the Oregon State University and Bates College. In 2010 he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Obama.
Kai N. Lee (Vice Chair) leads the Science subprogram in Conservation & Science at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The science subprogram provides support for science that informs decision making in the near term, advancing the strategies guiding the conservation activities of the Foundation. He also provides program support and liaison for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the Center for Ocean Solutions, and the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program. He taught at Williams College from 1991 - 2007 and is the Rosenburg Professor of Environmental Studies, emeritus. He directed the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams from 1991–1998 and 2001–2002, and taught from 1973 - 1991 at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is the author of Compass and Gyroscope (1993) and coauthor of Our Common Journey (NRC, 1999). He is a National Associate of the National Research Council. He was a member of the National Academies Roundtable on Science and Technology and served as vice-chair of the National Academies panel that wrote Informing Decisions in a Changing Climate (2009). Earlier, he had been a White House Fellow and represented the state of Washington as a member of the Northwest Power Planning Council. He was appointed in 2009 to the Science Advisory Board of the EPA. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University and an A.B., Magna Cum Laude in Physics, from Columbia University.
Mark R. Abbott is dean of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University, Corvallis. His research focuses on the interaction of biological and physical processes in the upper ocean, remote sensing of ocean color and sea surface temperature, phytoplankton fluorescence, and length and time scales of phytoplankton variability. He deployed the first array of bio-optical moorings in the Southern Ocean as part of the United States Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS). Dr. Abbott chairs the U.S. JGOFS Science Steering Committee and was a member of the MODIS and SeaWiFS science teams. He is currently a member of the board of trustees for the Consortium for Ocean Leadership and a member of the National Science Board. Dr. Abbott has also served as the chair of the SSB’s Committee on Earth Studies. Other prior NRC
service includes the Committee on Indicators for Understanding Global Climate Change, the Committee on the Role and Scope of Mission-Enabling Activities in NASA’s Space and Earth Sciences Missions, and the Panel on Land-Use Change, Ecosystem Dynamics, and Biodiversity for the 2007 decadal survey on Earth science and applications from space. Dr. Abbott is currently a member of the NRC’s Committee on an Assessment of NASA’s Earth Science Program, which is carrying out a mid-decade assessment of the implementation of the Earth science and applications from space decadal survey. He is also a member of the board of trustees for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Doug Arent is Executive Director of the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He specializes in strategic planning and financial analysis competencies; clean energy technologies and energy and water issues; and international and governmental policies. In addition to his NREL responsibilities, Arent is Sr. Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Arent was recently appointed as a Coordinating Lead Author for the 5th Assessment Report of IPCC. He is a member of Policy Subcommittee of the National Petroleum Council Study on Prudent Development of North America Natural Gas and Oil Resources, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Steering Committee on Social Science and the Alternative Energy Future. Arent served from 2008 to 2010 on the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change. Arent is, a Member of the Keystone Energy Board and is on the Advisory Board of E+Co, a public purpose investment company that supports sustainable development across the globe. He served on the Executive Council of the U.S. Association of Energy Economists from 2008–2010. Prior to coming to his current position, Arent was Director of the Strategic Energy Analysis Center at NREL from 2006–1010. Prior to joining NREL, he was a management consultant to clean energy companies, providing strategy, development and market counsel. Dr. Arent has a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and an MBA from Regis University.
Susan K. Avery took office as President and Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in 2008. She holds a Master’s in Physics and a Doctorate in Atmospheric Science from the University of Illinois. Avery was on the faculty of the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1982 – 2008, most recently holding the academic rank of Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research interests include studies of atmospheric circulation and precipitation, climate variability and water resources, and the development of new radar techniques and instruments for remote sensing. She also has a keen interest in scientific literacy and the role of science in public policy. She is the author or co-author of more than 80 peer-reviewed articles. A Fellow of CIRES since 1982, Avery became its Director in 1994. In that role, she facilitated new interdisciplinary research efforts spanning the geosciences and including the social and biological sciences. She spearheaded a reorganization of the institute and helped establish a thriving K-12 outreach program and a Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. She also worked with NOAA and the Climate Change Science Program to help formulate a national strategic science plan for climate research. Recently she served on two NRC panels: One produced a decadal plan for earth science and applications from space, and the other provided strategic guidance for the atmospheric sciences at the National Science Foundation. Avery is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Meteorological Society, for which she also served
as President. She is a past chair of the board of trustees of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
Robert E. Dickinson (NAS,NAE) is a respected leader in dynamic meteorology, physical climatology and climate modeling for the last four decades. He first delineated the way planetary scale Rossby waves interact with the mean flow–a process central to understanding the general circulation of the atmosphere. He has also established the major role of foliage in climate dynamics and made major contributions to other problems. His areas of interest include the dynamics of atmospheric planetary waves, stratospheric dynamics, models of global structure and dynamics of terrestrial and planetary thermosphere, NLTE infrared radiative transfer in planetary mesopheres, global climate modeling and processes, the role of land processes in climate systems, the modeling role of vegetation in regional evapotranspiration, and the role of tropical forests in climate systems. His recent research has focused on climate variability and change, aerosols, the hydrological cycle and droughts, land surface processes, the terrestrial carbon cycle, and the application of remote sensing data to modeling of land surface processes. He is an elected member of both the US National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, an honorary member of the European Geophysical Society and the European Geo-sciences Union and a Foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has been a member of numerous scientific advisory organizations, including the National Research Council. He holds a M.S. (1962) and Ph.D. (1966) in Meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Thomas Dietz is Assistant Vice President for Environmental Research, Professor of Sociology, Environmental Science and Policy, and Animal Studies at Michigan State University. His current research examines the human driving forces of environmental change, environmental values and the interplay between science and democracy in environmental issues. Dietz is also an active participant in the Ecological and Cultural Change Studies Group at MSU. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been awarded the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America, the Distinguished Contribution Award of the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society, and the Outstanding Publication Award, also from the American Sociological Association Section on Environment, Technology and Society. He has served on numerous National Academies’ panels and committees and chaired the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change and the Panel on Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making. He holds a Bachelor of General Studies degree from Kent State and a PhD in Ecology from the University of California at Davis.
Henry D. Jacoby is Professor of Management in the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and former Co-Director of the M.I.T. Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, which is focused on the integration of the natural and social sciences and policy analysis in application to the threat of global climate change. He oversees the design and application of the social science component of the Joint Program’s Integrated Global System Model – a comprehensive research tool for analyzing potential anthropogenic climate change and its social and environmental consequences – and he is a leader of M.I.T. research and analysis of national climate policies and the structure of the international climate regime. An undergraduate mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, Professor Jacoby holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University where he also served on the faculties of the Department of
Economics and the Kennedy School of Government. He has been Director of the Harvard Environmental Systems Program, Director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Associate Director of the MIT Energy Laboratory, and Chair of the MIT Faculty. He has made extensive contributions to the study of economics, policy and management in the areas of energy, natural resources and environment, writing widely on these topics including seven books. He currently serves on the Scientific Committee of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program.
Maria Carmen Lemos is Professor of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and Senior Policy Scholar at the Udall Center for the Study of Public Policy at the University of Arizona. She has MSc and PhD degrees in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. During 2006-2007 she was a James Martin 21st Century School Fellow at the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University. Her research focuses on environmental public policymaking in Latin America and the U.S., especially related to the human dimensions of climate change, the co-production of science and policy, and the role of technoscientific knowledge and environmental governance in building adaptive capacity to climate variability and change response. She is a co-founder of Icarus (Initiative on Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences), which seeks foster collaboration and exchange between scholars focusing on vulnerability and adaptation to climate change. She is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a contributor to the US Climate Change Science Program Synthesis Reports. She has served in number of NRC/NAS committees including Restructuring Federal Climate Research to Meet the Challenges of Climate Change, America Climate Choice Science Panel and the Human Dimensions of Environmental Change Committee.
Ian Roy Noble has spent 10 years with lead responsibility for the World Bank’s activities in adaptation to climate change. He has also worked with the Carbon Finance Unit on emissions reductions through reduced deforestation and forest degradation. Before coming to the Bank in 2002 he was Professor of Global Change Research at the Australian National University. He has had senior roles in the IPCC process and in international cooperative research on climate change as part of the IGBP (International Geosphere Biosphere Program) including chairing the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems for some years. An ecologist by training, he holds a PhD from the University of Adelaide, and his research interests cover animal behavior, vegetation and biodiversity management, ecosystem modeling, expert systems and the science-policy interface. In 1999 he was elected as Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
Camille Parmesan’s early research focused on multiple aspects of population biology, including the ecology, evolution and behaviors of insect/plant interactions. For the past several years, the focus of her work has been on current impacts of climate change in the 20th century on wildlife. Her work on butterfly range shifts has been highlighted in many scientific and popular press reports, such as in Science, Science News, New York Times, London Times, National Public Radio, and the recent BBC film series “State of the Planet” with David Attenborough. The intensification of global warming as an international issue led her into the interface of policy and science. Parmesan has given seminars in DC for the White House, government agencies, and NGOs (e.g., IUCN and WWF). As a lead author, she was involved in multiple aspects of the Third
Assessment Report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations). Parmesan received her B.S. degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984 and received a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from UT Austin in 1995.
Karen C. Seto is an Associate Professor of the Urban Environment, in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University. She studies the human transformation of land and the links between urbanization, global change, and sustainability. Her research focuses on characterizing urban land-use dynamics, understanding the process of urbanization, examining the environmental consequences of land-use change and urban expansion, and forecasting urban growth. Professor Seto’s geographic expertise is Asia, especially China and India. Professor Seto is Co-Chair of the Urbanization and Global Environmental Change Project of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, and a Coordinating Lead Author for Working Group III of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. She also serves on the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Steering Group and the NRC Geographical Sciences Committee. She is the Executive Producer of “10,000 Shovels: Rapid Urban Growth in China,” a documentary film that integrates satellite imagery, historical photographs, and contemporary film footage to highlight the urban changes occurring in China. Professor Seto is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow and recipient of a NASA New Investigator Program Award, a NSF Career Award, and a National Geographic Research Grant. She has a Ph.D. in Geography from Boston University.
Kathleen J. Tierney is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center at the University of Colorado. The Hazards Center is housed in the Institute of Behavioral Science, where Prof. Tierney holds a joint appointment. Dr. Tierney’s research focuses on the social dimensions of hazards and disasters, including natural, technological, and human-induced extreme events. With collaborators Michael Lindell and Ronald Perry, she recently published Facing the Unexpected: Disaster Preparedness and Response in the United States (Joseph Henry Press, 2001). This influential compilation presents a wealth of information derived from theory and research on disasters over the past 25 years. Among Dr. Tierney’s current and recent research projects are studies on the organizational response to the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center disaster, risk perception and risk communication, the use of new technologies in disaster management, and the impacts of disasters on businesses.
Charles J. Vorosmarty is a Professor of Civil Engineering, a Distinguished Scientist with the NOAA-Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center and Director of The City University of New York’s Environmental Crossroads Initiative at The City College of New York. His research focuses on the development of computer models and geospatial data sets used in synthesis studies of the interactions among the water cycle, climate, biogeochemistry and anthropogenic activities. His studies are built around local, regional and continental to globalscale modeling of water balance, discharge, constituent fluxes in river systems and the analysis of the impacts of large-scale water engineering on the terrestrial water cycle. He is a founding member of the Global Water System Project that represents the input of more than two hundred international scientists under the International Council for Science’s Global Environmental Change Programs. He is spearheading efforts to develop global-scale indicators of water stress, to develop and apply databases of reservoir construction worldwide and to analyze coastal zone risks associated with water diversion. He recently won one of two national awards through the National Science Foundation to execute studies on hydrologic synthesis. Dr. Vorosmarty also is on several national and international advisory panels, including the U.S.
Arctic Research Commission, the NASA Earth Science Subcommittee, the National Research Council Committee on Hydrologic Science, the National Science Foundation’s Arctic System Science Program Committee and the Arctic HYDRA International Polar Year Planning Team. He also was on a National Research Council panel that reviewed NASA’s polar geophysical data sets, the decadal study on earth observations, and is Co-Chair of the National Science Foundation’s Arctic CHAMP hydrology initiative. He has assembled regional and continental-scale hydro-meteorological data compendia, including the largest single collection, Arctic-RIMS (covering northern Eurasia and North America).
John M. Wallace (NAS) has directed his research at improving our understanding of global climate and its year-to-year and decade-to-decade variations, making use of observational data. He has contributed to the identification and understanding of a number of atmospheric phenomena, including the vertically propagating planetary waves that drive the quasi-biennial oscillation in zonal winds in the equatorial stratosphere, the 4-5-day period easterly waves that modulate daily rainfall over the tropical oceans, and the dominant spatial patterns in month-to-month and year-to-year climate variability, including the one through which the El Nio phenomenon in the tropical Pacific influences climate over North America. He has contributed to documenting the existence of El Nino- like variability on a decade to decade time scale (the so called ’Pacific Decadal Oscillation’). He earned a B.S. in Naval Architecture (1962) from the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture. He then went on to earn a Ph.D. in meteorology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1966.
Gary W. Yohe is the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University; he has been on the faculty at Wesleyan for more than 30 years. He received his PhD in Economics from Yale University in 1975. Most of his recent work has focused on bringing risk-management perspectives to the mitigation and adaptation/impacts sides of the climate issue. Involved with the IPCC since the mid 1990s, he served as a Lead Author for four different chapters in the Third Assessment Report and as Convening Lead Author for the Fourth Assessment Report. In the Fourth Assessment, he also worked with the Core Writing Team to prepare the overall Synthesis Report. He is now serving as a Lead Author in one chapter and a Convening Lead Author in another for the Fifth Assessment Report. Dr. Yohe is a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change and the NRC Standing Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change. He also served on the NRC’s America’s Climate Choices Adaptation Panel, the NRC Panel on Addressing the Challenges of Climate Change through the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and the NRC Committee on Stabilization Targets for Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Concentrations. He is co-editor of Climatic Change and a Vice-Chair of the National Climate Assessment Development and Advisory Committee.
